Toronto+Vancouver City of Labyrinths Project

I spent a couple of days earlier this week in The City, San Francisco.

Initially it was to honour the sixth anniversary of the Boxing Day Tsunami.

I built a giant outline of a candle in luminaria, then as I did exactly five months ago on the one month anniversary of the Tsunami, I waited for the Sun to set on the west coast of North America…

In due course, the same Sun would rise in East Asia.

This Giant Candle is my way of sending hope from here to there; of saying without words, that you all have not been forgotten.

I decided to stay overnight at Ocean Beach after building a fire with driftwood, sharing warmth with strangers, falling asleep to echoing rhythms of The Pacific as waves crashed womblike upon the shore.

The morning brought breakfast beside The Cliff House above the ruins of the Sutro Baths, then ultimately, exploring the Land’s End trail near Mile Rock Beach.

Without expectation, following a winding trail, a discovery.

But who and when and why and how…

The what however, is known: Lands End Labyrinth.

Second in a trilogy of Bay Area labyrinths by Eduardo Aguilera.

It’s about a year old, though I had no knowledge of that at the time of discovery.

As it happened, I was still carrying a printout of a seven circuit Chartes labyrinth design.

I struck up a conversation with Roger, one of the early morning labyrinth walkers who you see wearing a Farley’s hoodie.

Roger had no clue as to the origins, but turns out, he himself had just built a labyrinth in his backyard.

Roger also owns Farley’s Coffee in Potrero Hill.

…Amazing who you can meet when you walk newly discovered labyrinths…

A number of co-incidences have happened in and around discovery of Lands End Labyrinth.

This labyrinth is off the beaten path and built by one person, Eduardo Aguilera, in hopes that people would discover them on their own. …sounds familiar.

He had built another labyrinth in the Marin Headlands, at an exact spot that I would discover later the same day. When I stumbled upon the spot, immediately I was inspired to gather stones and begin a labyrinth outline in the earth… yet I was out of gas. Exhausted. Spent. Yet still inspired to return and do it properly.

San Francisco and Toronto, both share well known public labyrinths attached to churches in central locations initiated by formal networks of people: Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and Trinity Church in Toronto

Find myself realizing that I may be Toronto’s Eduardo Aguilera.

But now left with a question I cannot answer from here, where does the Land End in Toronto?

… okay, so we didn’t finish making the labyrinth in the big backyard earlier this evening … manana, manana …

This is the Big Backyard to my grandparents’ place in Fremont, California.

One of those suburban nightmares where everything is manicured and nothing out of the norm ever seems to appear.

Eyeing the boredom of the complex’s kids and the great green grass canvas since my visit began here, I finally broke down today and installed, or rather tried to install, a labyrinth.

The only materials I could readily use were simple 8.5 by 11 sheets of paper and everyday toothpicks to pin the sheets into the grass.

Harder than it looks or sounds, the grass being deep, the ground moist, my fingers and thumbs aching, the children impatient.

The kids kept asking if the labyrinth was ready all afternoon. They even helped now and then, but their tiny fingers failed them after at best a sheet or two.

Imagine kids in the backseat of your car on a long trip repeating, ‘Are we there yet?’ and your ears may get a feel for what echoed in Fremont all afternoon.

Finally, I just gave in and let them play.

No one seemed to care the paper labyrinth wasn’t done yet.

It was enjoyed as is — unfinished.